The Daily Heller

Also I was gratified to finally launch another pet project this week, The Daily Heller, an automated email that pulls from Steve Heller’s weekday blog postings on the PRINT magazine site. It’s compelling sponsored content - and we can now replicate this low-cost profitable model across all F+W brands.

in-text ad experiment

i finally got to try out my low-impact solution. check it out on the Popular Woodworking site

For example, when you’re reading this article on Varnish, you’ll see the double green underline that links the keyword “projects” (we picked about a dozen such generic keywords) to relevant products in the F+W store.

Now let’s see what the site visitors make of all this.

crossworld expedition

it was just a matter of time. on july 8th, IBM and Linden Labs did it.

Why online ad formats fail: introducing the hoverer

Good post by Scott Karp on Publishing 2.0 in which he says “We need to invent new forms of advertising on the web.”

And my reply, which incorporates a LinkedIn Answer of mine from 18 months ago, formally introducing my “the Hoverer” unit.

NPR: Learning from the Virtual You

How you appear in the virtual world could affect your behavior, according to researchers.

v. called

asking for advice about using SL as a platform for serious training. she hadn’t been in-world in a while and wanted a sense of what was going on. i told her about the troubles with the main grid but also about the new model focusing on providing a reliable server-based utility for businesses. if an enterprise is in its own controlled virtual environment, i think it should be stable, right?

Turbulence in the Grid

Residents and businesses have been shaking out in the wake of tech and org turbulence. New CEO named this week, an online brand leader who still believes firmly in the SL platform and sees the future in 3D. All I can say is that my 12 year old just gave up “junk TV” willingly for a premium-paid account on Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” virtual world game. And it looks alot like Second Life to me.

cross-world expedition

My weekly inworld meetup group, SLbizNet, has been gathering every Saturday at noon SLT for many months. We’ve had lots of great sessions but now it’s time to change things up, so no more Saturdays for a while (at least, not for me; the other members may continue to meet regularly). I’ve proposed we focus on a special event: a cross-world expedition to another virtual world.

One of our members is a Java programmer and has been telling us for a long while about Open Sims and “other grids” - in fact, Jeff Barr of Amazon pointed me to a list of them here.

Wouldn’t it be fun if we gathered our SLbizNet group in SL, climbed aboard an airship or other vehicle, dematerialized and then teleported to another world? I’ve already been warned it won’t be as easy as it sounds for many reasons (SL objects aren’t portable, our avatars may not have the same appearance in the new world, etc.).

It all sounds like a fine challenge to me…

catchup

Do as I say, not as I do:

If you have a blog, you create the expectation that you will post at least once or twice a week. So I’ve got a lot of catching up to do…

Two items I’ve been meaning to share, both about contacts that came entirely via SL:

1.) I received an inworld IM one day from an avatar named Adrianna, who had used the inworld Search and found Quinnipiac University mentioned in my profile. I arranged to meet her in my favorite place in SL, Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar in New Orleans, where we proceeded to have a wonderful chat about the Master’s Program in Interactive Communications.

I connected her with the other students in SL, and with the Prof who brought us inworld and who maintains both an avatar and an SL group. Adrianna met and chatted with him as well, and long story short: She has applied and been accepted to the program. SL is officially an educational recruiting channel.

2.) My avatar has a profile on Facebook (contemplate that for a second) and belongs to several SL related Facebook groups. Through one of those groups, I was contacted by a journalism student in India who was doing a paper on SL. She wanted to send me a questionnaire about my SL use; I immediately asked her if she could send it to me inworld rather than by email, because it would be “more fun” than getting it as a Word doc attachment.

She sent it to me as an SL notecard, which I filled out and sent back. I also put her onto some of my fellow students and gave her some other leads for sources (like danah boyd and Sherry Turkle). Long story short: she completed the paper and posted it on her blog at my suggestion.

Cross-world, cross-cultural collaboration. I love it!

Jan. 26, 2008 meetup

Our best meeting yet, thanks to Hunter Glass of SL Business Magazine, who provided the location and brought Bare Rose and InterSection Unlimited.